XCOM Enemy Unknown: Gollop praises developer’s ‘great job’

XCOM: Enemy Unknown developer Firaxis had a mammoth task on its hands when attempting to reboot Julian Gollop’s original game UFO: Enemy Unknown. The team can relax however, as the 2K-published game has received Gollop’s blessing.

Speaking with Eurogamer Gollop said, “I think Firaxis has done a great job,”The game is addictive and absorbing, not to mention quite challenging on the classic difficulty setting.

“Most of their decisions have been pretty sensible,” he added, “and they have made a very console-friendly game. Overall I think they have preserved the essence of the original X-Com.”

Gollop wasn’t all smiles and sunshine about the game however, as he expressed some issue with the game’s geographical mapping, and the fact you can only have one base, rather than several around the globe, “One small disappointment is that the positions of events and bases in the world view have no relevance at all.

“I often get the feeling that some things are just too deliberately contrived. The three simultaneous abduction sites [of which the player can only respond to one] being the worst offender.

“The original X-Com had significantly more pseudo-random elements. However, it is clear that they have been following Sid Meier’s dictum that games are essentially about making interesting decisions. They have strived to make every decision have some kind of trade-off.”

Gollop also finds the Thin Men enemy type too comical.

What do you make of Firaxis’ XCOM reboot? Did it preserve the essence of the original game well? Let us know below.